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Hot on the heels of Geoff’s showcase, this will be a welcome change of pace, as the focus goes back to cool indie games and laid-back vibes. Streaming only on Youtube:

So, Not-E3 or SGF or whatever we are calling it kicks off tomorrow with this showcase. Typically focusing on indie stuff, and games that might otherwise not receive due attention. In addition to surprise announcements, trailers and gameplay, four games being covered have already been announced: Void Train Blood West Pizza Possum Hammerwatch 2 Links: https://www.youtube.com/c/guerrillacollective https://www.twitch.tv/guerrillacollective

MANKIND IS DEAD. BLOOD IS FUEL. HELL IS FULL. ULTRAKILL is one of the new breed of ‘movement shooters’ that updates 90s classics like Quake style gameplay by drizzling Doom 2016’s propulsive gameplay loop on top. Mainly the work of a single indie developer, you can expect to dash, slide, and wall-jump around combat arenas at breakneck speeds, blasting hordes of enemies to buzzsaw drum and bass while racking up points on a Devil May Cry style score counter. This game is still in early access on Steam, so it’s a little rough around the edges, but IT FUCKING SLAPS! It’s total audio-visual overload, but it feels incredible once you get into its groove. You’re given a bunch of ways to stay on the move, and the game expects you to use them to survive. It’s a little overwhelming at first, but once you get the hang of it, it’s incredible fun. I’d recommend fiddling with your controls until you get a setup that feels comfortable, because you’re going to need to get up close and personal with the enemies—the only way to heal is to drench yourself in their FRESH BLOOD by dealing damage in close proximity, a mechanic clearly inspired by Doom 2016’s desire to keep you teetering on the brink at all times. No worries if you fail in any encounter in this game though, checkpoints are generally quite generous and restarts are nigh-instant. Anyway, getting right up in the enemy’s face isn’t as scary as it sounds though, as the guns, man... The guns are where it’s at! You’ll unlock more as you play through the campaign, starting with a pistol before graduating to a shotgun and then mini-gun and beyond. Every weapon I’ve unlocked so far feels great to handle while also boasting a really cool secondary fire function. To give a couple of examples, the pistol can fire a charged shot and the minigun launches a homing beacon which its regular ammo curves toward once set. However, it gets better! Each weapon can be upgraded with a variant version which has an alternative alt-fire mode. An alt-alt fire mode, if you will. These are some of the coolest things in the game. Or any game for that matter! Going back to the pistol to minimise spoilers, you can make it so instead of firing charged shot, you fling a coin in the air, which when shot then zings toward the nearest enemy weakspot, dealing huge damage. Stylish as all heck and doubly satisfying amid the chaos of even the most basic enemy encounter. I could go on for longer, but don’t want to spoil any more than that—there’s great pleasure to be had teasing out a weapon’s secrets. Anyway, the game is in good shape, with a “proper” release slated for some point in 2023. The campaign is about two-thirds done, but there are a couple of extras like an endless horde mode included for good measure. The campaign also happens to be incredibly replayable; each level is packed with secrets to find and mini challenges to complete. The levels are satisfying but bite-size, which encourages repeat play and makes gunning for high scores an actual fun prospect. It never feels like homework as it so often does in other games which grade your performance – I’ve actually had more fun replaying levels than going through them first time! I should definitely include a warning to say to expect a challenge going into this game though, as it’s pretty demanding right now on the standard settings. However, there are multiple difficulty modes, and a very granular range of lighter and heavier assists available to use at any point, which even includes the ability to slow the speed of the game as a whole, so I think most can enjoy the experience to their liking. The assists are so comprehensive that boss encounters have their own suite of settings. On the whole though, the difficulty of the game IS a touch lumpy at the moment – fingers crossed this will get finessed for the final release – even the tutorial levels will see you dying repeatedly as you learn the controls and rhythm of the game, but I think it’s the bosses that will undoubtedly be an early sticking point for many. They can feel impossible at first, but keep at it and you’ll figure them out. I guess it’s a touch Soulsy, in that regard, though the pace is much quicker and there's not much in the way of runbacks. The great feel and atmosphere of the game definitely got me to stick with the game through the early challenges though, and once the game clicks it’s pure zone gaming joy like Hotline Miami or Nuclear Throne. Zip around, juggle weapons, get huge scores! (p.s. Don’t be deterred if you have trouble with a specific boss in the the first Act, I’d say one of the bosses in the first world is more difficult than anything I’ve come up against since.) Anyway, has anyone else played this? I’ve played just over a third of the content available in the campaign now and am massively looking forward to getting stuck into the rest! And if I haven't managed to convince you, maybe popular fighting game video essayist Leon Massey might sway you.

Newly announced by Team Reptile, whose Lethal League Blaze was great but didn't seem to quite find the audience it deserved. Just a Steam announcement for now, but I imagine it'll be heading to everything eventually. https://store.steampowered.com/app/1353230/Bomb_Rush_Cyberfunk/ Seems they've got Hideki Naganuma on board again for some tunes. A bunch of the OG devs said recently that they weren't interested in pursuing new Jet Set Radio games themselves, so if Sega won't do it, I'm glad someone else will (albeit under a different name).

So, we've got Inscryption coming up on 2021, and it looks absolutely amazing. Here's the trailer! I'm going to be completely honest with you and admit that I absolutely love these sorts of thing, and the visual presentation is so far up my street it's got itself lodged in my colon. If anyone is interested in a short sneak peak of the game, the prototype Sacrifices Must Be Made is available to download here, and I would absolutely recommend giving it a go. It's a 20mb download, and isn't particularly long, giving you a single opponent to play against. The game has a singularly disturbing feel to it, and for something in such a primitive state which was slapped together in it's entirely in 48 hours, the actual card game is extremely good. So, I'm super proper hyped about this one. edit Just to add a bit more about the game, since that's what people will want to read about, I'm going to talk about the mechanisms below - but about the situation that you find yourself in, which will be sort of revealed in the Prototype. This isn't a traditional card game like Magic: the Gathering where two people with two equal decks face off against one another - it's a specifically designed single player game with card mechanics. The most important thing to grasp is that you'll know what your opponent is going to play and where a turn ahead of where it happens, and the core of the game is navigating that puzzle. There's no economy in the game - all cards have a number of blood marks between zero and theoretically four. In order to play a card, you must sacrifice a number of cards you already have in play to the value of the blood marks of the card you want to play. All cards are considered equal for these purposes - the only exception to the rule is the Cat who can be "sacrificed" without leaving play, making it a permanent resource as long as it's in play - but having no offensive capability, it's doomed to die if something is opposing it. The upshot of all this is that you need to play out zero blood mark animals in order to be able to afford anything else, but they're universally terrible and will due at the weapons or claws of almost anything else in the game, so unless you're desperate you need to use them or lose them, or be prepared to throw them away in a chump-block. You win by dealing damage to your opponent, and if your cards are opposed by enemy cards then you do damage to those instead. The number of points you need to win is... variable, and the scores are placed on a weighing scale and when your opponents scale touches the table they lose. The consequence to this is that if you're scoring points off one another about evenly, nobody is making any progress towards victory. Your opponent may offer you a mechanism to "right the scales" if you're losing badly by... passing you a knife. But think carefully before you pick that fucker up. It's a desperate measure, trust me. At the end of each round you get to pick a new card up (as it pretty traditional in these games), but obviously in the prototype deck building is exceptionally limited and you only get two choices overall - but those choices did make a difference to how I played the game for sure.

Recently I dived into my unplayed pile in Steam and dug up this free to play walking sim Off-Peak. I was about to just delete it seeing how ugly the in game characters looked but there were a load of recommendations from Rock Paper Shotgun and it was on my list of short games (time wise). So I tried it out... ...and fell in love with it. Part of it is the music. A lot of it is the music. And the atmosphere, it's incredibly off beat and weird. I think the nearest thing I could describe it as is Tass Times in Tonetown meets Myst...anyway here's the trailer. And a link to the game itself https://store.steampowered.com/app/467360/OffPeak/ That lead me to the sequel, The Norwood Suite (which is half price right now in the sales) and I loved it even more as I explored the hotel and talked to it's weird inhabitants. There's not much more to it than talking to guests, fetching things and trying to discover all the hidden passages. The problems reminded me a lot of text adventures in the 80's. Even though it appeared clunky on the surface it had some brilliant design decisions (I really liked the way that you could ask the concierge for hints if you forgot what you needed to do.) From here https://store.steampowered.com/app/696480/The_Norwood_Suite/ you can get the game or the demo. My advice would be to ignore the demo. Play Off Peak and if that grabs you then buy and play The Norwood Suite (which starts where Off Peak finishes.)

https://store.steampowered.com/app/674520/FightN_Rage/ Can't remember where I saw this mentioned - possibly the Streets of Rage IV thread. Anyways, I thought it looked nice, so I added it to my wishlist. It is currently on sale (75% off until March 1st) and so I took the plunge on Friday night and I really enjoyed it. The graphics are good once you tweak the settings to your liking - personally I wasn't keen on the CRT filters and over saturated colours. The music is good and most importantly, so is the gameplay. It's nothing revolutionary, but the combo system and special meter work well to stop it being just a button masher. There are 3 playable characters to choose from - with more unlockable by the looks of it. Definitely recommended for the current price of £3.74! (not my video)

A new (old) Net Yaroze title for PlayStation! it's a randomly generated gauntlet style game (real-time rogue-like, if you must) Originally created to beta state in 1998, then shelved/cancelled. Finished in 2020 by another developer under direction of the original developers. interview/history http://netyaroze-europe.com/Media/Magic-Castle download bin/cue https://archive.org/details/magic-castle-2020-23-dec manual https://archive.org/details/mcmanual/ Apparently the end is after level 20. Lots of Easter Eggs. Note: works on PS2 from hard power off; may not work from standby.

The publisher that once gave the world Cosmo's Cosmic Adventure is back! The company's original founder Scott Miller is involved, so it's not just a resurrection in name only. https://www.apogeeent.com/devblog/apogeeisback https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2021-04-20-apogee-entertainment-relaunches-as-indie-publisher https://gamasutra.com/view/news/380138/Apogee_Software_reboots_as_Apogee_Entertainment_vows_to_boost_the_odds_for_indies.php Promotional video with Duke Nukem introducing some clips of old Apogee/3D Realms games, and some clips of titles they're publishing: First announced game is a Terraria/Celeste/Spelunky/Noita-looking survival platformer called Residual:

I had a look around for a thread about this one, but I couldn't find it - so since it's nearly 2021, and I'm positive I'll be releasing VERY EARLY ON in the year: - Midnight Fight Express The official blurb says this: - ... so yeah, looks like this going to be the Dark Souls of Indie Brawlers! God I hate this Dark Souls of X thing. But ignoring that for a moment, I think the game looks pretty awesome - I suspect it's going to be heavily influenced by the Batman: Arkham Asylum series in terms of it's combat, which is no real bad thing as that was one of the absolute best bits of those games, and this might have more of that going on with none of that tedious shit that games don't need like atmosphere and story and stuff. It also looks like a fertile ground for digital dress up. Anyway, I really like brawler games, so this is definitely getting slapped onto my wishlist.

No. Really. More info here. https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2017/12/16/mount-your-friends-3d/

Hey folks, hopefully, no one minds a shameless plug This comes from the game dev thread where I posted this and I was quite happy with the kind words and reactions (thanks!) - so I figured I'd brave the main discussion. I, along with others, have been developing a game and we're at a stage now where we're going to be running a closed alpha, which people can sign up to. Along with this, we're hoping to generate some interest, support, and hype. From a personal point of view, I'd also love to see some of us 'mukkers playing Anyway, I'll let some of the following videos and links do the talking. If any of you could help support us, whether that's signing up to play, discussing it here or passing the message to friends (word of mouth etc), I'd massively appreciate it. Now I'm going to run and hide "The D.R.G. Initiative pitches teams of 6 characters against each other in intense shooting battles. Team Elimination is the name of the game, with adaptive game objectives controlled by the GamesMaster adding a unique element, never before seen in video games! Oh and don’t forget the Addicted… they will savage anyone who gets too close!" [update] Early Access Release: http://store.steampowered.com/app/613580/The_DRG_Initiative/ Main page: https://thedrginitiative.com/ Close alpha sign up: https://thedrginitiative.com/closed-alpha/ Trailer time We also ran a small event in London a couple of months back - this also helps explain a bit about the game and lastly, my favorite screen shot so far

To any indies that have released an iOS or Android game, have you got any advice or stories about your experiences? I'm about 3 months away from release of my indie sports title T20 Card Cricket which has been a struggle as I've worked on it part time for the last 2.5 years, had a baby a few months ago and had a licensing deal appear and fall through within a five month period. Not only that, my coder tore of part of his thumb in a mountain-biking accident, and one of my artists started going blind but although I say it every year, this time it really looks like the finish line is in sight. If you feel like sharing your experiences, how you got noticed, download numbers, mistakes you made, soft launches, monetisation strategy, I'd love to hear them. Also, if you have any advice/theories that go against the conventional wisdom that you read on Gamasutra and other development sites, I'd love to hear that too. I'm of the opinion that to get noticed you have to do things differently. As T20CC is quite niche (cricket x puzzle), I'm thinking of approaching sports writers and the games/sports section of publications rather than the traditional games press (I don't see a lot of crossover between cricket followers and traditional gaming press). Not that I'd compare T20CC to the mighty New Star Soccer, but I think getting featured in sporting publications of non-gaming press was a big part of its success (feel free to correct me, SiRead). Right now, as I wait for the next build, I'm cutting my trailer and looking to get that out in the next few weeks. I'm of the opinion that mobile games don't need the months and months of lead-in marketing that say Steam or console games require as the attention span of mobile gamers is very much 'can I download this now?' Put a link to your game site if you can. I'd like to check how you did your trailers and website as well. (mods - I put this in here instead of development for visibility purposes)

Hey guys, I'm interested in your ideas about this topic: http://progorion.com/blog/2017/06/22/128/ How would you separate the different designs? What tasks should the player solve to make it interesting and fun? I posted it here because I hope this topic is appropriate. Thanks for any feedback!

Hello, I'm interested in your opinion about this topic: http://progorion.com/blog/2017/06/15/computer-tycoon-is-a-business-simulation-or-a-grand-strategy-game/ What do you think, what makes a game to be a grand strategy? Do you need armies as a mandatory? Thanks for any feedback! Andris

My bud at Infinite State games has uploaded a trailer for their next game. Sadly Don't Die Mr Robot didn't do very well despite being a bloody excellent game. It's hard to get gaming sites to cover you unless you're already a big name these days.

Been a while since I've been in these parts - probably the Crackdown 2 days... sorry about that one Anyway, I'll take this opportunity to share my new iOS title, Jack B. Nimble! It's a fast-paced, reaction-heavy platformer with a retro 8-bit/game boy aesthetic heavily borrowing from Castlevania (or Kid Dracula). It is available now on iOS for $1.99 - no ads, no in app purchases, just game You can grab it here: https://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=918891211&mt=8 A bit more info... It's a score attack game where you have to run and jump gaps over a distance for points. The core mechanic has you jumping and whipping - something handled with a single input (one tap to jump and whilst airborne, another tap to whip)! Whipping candles will multiply your score and maintaining accuracy is key to bagging all of the points you've earned. All the while backed by a pumping chiptune soundtrack by my pal Barry (who is pretty amazing, any of you making games should be hitting him up for the musics). ...and if you wanna get in touch with me about the game, or anything really, just reply below or contact me directly on Twitter (@SeanNoonan). I also have a website with a bunch of my other games, here: http://www.sean-noonan.com Thanks, and I hope you enjoy the game!

here's a little insight into how we did our beat/keymatched audio in ookibloks

Apologies for people waiting for Beta invites..

I am a programmer who works for a small video games company in the North West. I have a game idea which I would like to make in unity and I am looking for a person/people to help get a prototype up and running. The game will be in 3D and will have a cartoon style. I would be able to do all the programming myself so I am looking for a person who can model/rig/animate and can help with the game design. Long term I would like to release on IOS or submit prototype to Sony Pub Fund to get backing to finish the game. Any questions about me or game then drop me a PM. Thanks Pete.